Red Star Burning

14

Charlie’s dreamless sleep didn’t last the entire flight, just sufficiently for the aching finally to disappear, despite the seat limitations. He straightened, with antenna-prompted awareness, at the first change in the engine pitch, the initial priority to study the rest of the tourist group with whom he’d had no proper contact in Manchester. Charlie didn’t foresee any practical use from being part of it, apart from the initial, prebooked hotel accommodation, but in the entirely unplanned, thin-iced circumstances he’d created for himself it was impossible to anticipate anything he might need.

There were sixteen other people in the party, predominantly couples apart from three teenage girls in addition to Muriel, whose surname he discovered to be Simpson and whom he guessed to be in her early twenties. She was sitting next to him when he awoke.

“You really did need to sleep, didn’t you?” she greeted. She was an auburn-haired, small-featured woman who clearly believed her bust was her most attractive feature, judging from the upthrusting bra in which it was encased beneath a company-advertising T-shirt.

“I’ve been working flat out to get a project almost to closure,” said Charlie, deciding to introduce an already determined insurance for what was soon to follow.

“What sort of project?” she asked, predictably.

“One that means a lot to me,” said Charlie. “I can trust your discretion, can’t I?”

“I’d hope so,” said the woman, smiling at being taken into a confidence.

“You’ve heard of Russian oligarch billionaires settling in England?”

“Of course.” The expectant smile broadened.

“I’ve made a particular study of Russian architecture: got this commission to build a pavilion completely in the prerevolutionary style in the grounds of his Sussex estate for one of the best-known … I can’t, of course, tell you his name.…”

“Of course not,” she agreed, dropping the smile to indicate her seriousness.

“If I get this right, it’ll open every door. I’ve studied all the photographs and all the pictured art work, spent some time in St. Petersburg. I’ve snatched at this trip to confirm the styles that I’ve followed.”

“I can understand the importance of that.”

“I’m telling you now to warn you that I’m going to skip most of your trips.”

For the first time there was a frown. “The firm’s responsible for the people in this group.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” soothed Charlie, with open-faced sincerity.

“How are you going to get around by yourself?”

Charlie hesitated, anxious to keep the invention as unquestionable as possible. “I studied Russian at university: speak it pretty well.”

The smile came back, broader than before. “Which university?”

The eagerness warned Charlie. “Was Russian your university module?”

“It’s why I’m doing this job, postgraduate. I want to speak it perfectly, eventually to get a diplomatic job.”

“Which university?” asked Charlie, turning her question back upon the girl.

“Manchester, obviously.”

“Bristol,” escaped Charlie.

On their overhead panel the fasten-seat-belt sign came on, the signal for the copilot’s landing announcement.

“I hope you get what you want in Moscow,” said Muriel.

“I’m determined I will,” Charlie promised himself.

Charlie rehearsed for the contradictions of a night arrival, the time of the fewest incoming flights carrying the fewest number of passengers among whom to hide from the fewest number of airport immigration officers and hopefully from the constantly open-eyed CCTV, which in the case of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, while far less than the Orwellian intrusion of England, still had to be guarded against.

He scanned as much of the cabin as it was possible to see beyond his own tourist party and concluded his luck was holding with three of them-two men, one big enough to be Monsford’s twin, and a woman-remaining the tallest and the heaviest. He got close behind them as they got onto the disembarkation pier and Muriel unwittingly helped by shifting back and forth, a shepherdess keeping her easily strayed flock tight together. Charlie switched his attention between the tall-statured three and one of the smallest women in the group, maneuvering her unevenly wheeled suitcase to give him the excuse to bend away from the easily spotted cameras. His most exposed moment came at the passport booth, which he guarded against as best he could by fumbling through his cabin baggage hold-all close to his face for his tourist-group documentation, aware of the watchful Muriel on the far side as he was passed through unchallenged. Charlie judged his other danger point the camera-monitored registration desk at the Rossiya Hotel on the Ulitsa Razina and again used the burly trio, the Monsford look-alike predominantly, as well as his face-obscuring hold-all.

The prebooked accommodation put Muriel in the next room to his and she paused directly in front of him, handing over the key. “I’m responsible for everyone in the party: to make sure no one breaks the rules. Don’t get me into trouble, okay?”

“I’ve never got a girl into trouble,” said Charlie, acknowledging as he spoke that it was yet another lie. Would he be able to make contact with Natalia later today, when Moscow woke up? he wondered.

“Heathrow, four hours after the departure of Charlie’s Moscow flight,” declared John Passmore.

“Positively confirmed?” Aubrey Smith demanded.

The MI5 operations director shook his head. “Assessed at the moment at seventy-five percent: if it’s Charlie, he’s bloody good. It was the last KLM flight of the day. We’ve got two possible CCTV shots, in each of which he’s shielded, even at the passport check. Technical are doing their best to enhance and work out height and weight.”

“Charlie is bloody good,” acknowledged the MI5 Director-General. “No help from passport recognition?”

Passmore shook his head again. “If we get enough to harden up the Heathrow images I’ll circulate Charlie’s picture to airport-based Special Branch. It’s a shotgun effort to shoot down a sparrow but it might tell us when Charlie goes out of the country again.”

“If he hasn’t already left,” qualified Smith.

“If he’s already left it’ll give us a potential arrival to warn Moscow.”

“I’ve had three buck-passing calls from Monsford, stressing that Charlie’s our responsibility,” disclosed Smith.

“Straughan bought me lunch,” capped Passmore. “The supposedly finest Aberdeen Angus at the Reform, which unfortunately was overcooked.”

Smith smiled. “And?”

“At one stage I thought he was inferring that we’d colluded: had some foreknowledge, even, of Charlie’s vanishing act.”

“What’s your reading from that?”

“Panic, above and beyond any sensible concern,” assessed Passmore. “Straughan’s focus was mostly upon whether Charlie really had been turned all those years ago. I had to agree the sequence of events from Charlie’s disappearance supported that doubt.”

“What’s the doubt I’m hearing in your voice right now?” picked out Smith.

“I don’t believe this is the combined operation it’s supposed to be,” openly admitted Passmore.

“You suspect I’m keeping something more from you?” demanded Smith, matching the openness.

“Are you?”

“That’s an insubordinate, presumptuous inference!” declared Smith, the habitual quietness of his voice reducing the intended indignation.

“And that’s an avoiding answer. I lost an arm and a career because my superiors didn’t tell me the whole truth,” rejected Passmore, feeling across to his empty, left side. “I don’t want to lose whatever career I’m trying to establish in this shadow-shifting environment, to which I still obviously haven’t adjusted, through the same default. To prevent which I’d prefer to resign.”

Aubrey Smith sat with his head bowed, contemplating the totally unexpected turn in the conversation. Finally looking up, he said: “I’d hoped my apology for not being completely honest was sufficient. I respect and admire your integrity and want to convince you of mine. I have kept nothing more of this operation from you. If there is a hidden aspect, I am as unaware of it as you are.”

Now it was Passmore who lapsed into silence for a moment, good arm once more crossed to where his other had once been. “I’m convinced there’s something else. I haven’t the slightest evidence for the suspicion beyond instinct, but from some of the things Straughan said I believe there’s a something being kept from us. If it is, we’re being set up to be scapegoats.”

“Which I won’t let us be,” refused Smith, emptied by what he saw as the confirmation of what he’d feared since this current episode had begun.

“How, then, do we prevent it?” wondered the operations director

“Managing independent contact with Charlie could help.”

“Who could be following the same instinct by doing what he’s done, as well as asking for those separate passports,” suggested Passmore.

Harry Jacobson nervously lengthened his reconnaissance at the ferry terminal, the knot in the very pit of his already hollowed stomach tightening further in his despair of ever properly ensuring there wasn’t a snatch squad in the ebb and flow of people he was scouring for the first glimpse of Maxim Radtsic, hoping against hope that once more the man wouldn’t appear and that the operation would be aborted before it even began. It wasn’t just the apprehension of becoming the victim of an FSB counterplot that convinced Jacobson the Russian’s extraction was doomed. He was equally worried by the accumulated recognition that in the questionably professional planning there were far too many unforeseeable, abyss-deep pitfalls-the unexpected discovery of Andrei Radtsic’s live-in girlfriend the latest-in what had been conceived more like a tin-soldiered, make-believe war game commanded by incompetents safe in their London riverside bunkers. Now the game could be over before it even began because the most undisciplined tin soldier hadn’t obeyed orders, leaving him, if the analogy was continued, the first of the other tin soldiers likely to fall if it was all an FSB entrapment.

Jacobson reluctantly acknowledged that his alternative, walking away and lying that Radtsic hadn’t turned up, wasn’t feasible. The chances of the FSB executive director approaching another Western intelligence agency, the CIA the most likely, were too great and if the man did and there was eventual publicity, his career in MI6-already hanging by a thread, according to Monsford’s most recent diatribe-would be over. But he didn’t need to lie, he realized, finally identifying the Stalin look-alike barging his way through the shifting melee below.

Jacobson observed the postsailing-surveillance precautions, minimally encouraged at isolating no one showing undue interest in either of them, eventually following the Russian into a windowed observation lounge that provided a panoramic view of the red-walled, star-towered Kremlin as the ferry made its slow way parallel along the river. The view kept everyone on the fortress side, leaving the farthest section of the observation room free for Jacobson and Radtsic.

“You had time to settle everything with Elana?” opened Jacobson, choosing a gradual lead-up in the hope of limiting Radtsic’s reaction to Andrei’s romance.

“I think so,” said the older man, although uncertainly.

“Has she really changed her mind back again: agreed to come?”

“Yes.” The uncertainty was still there.

Contrary to which the nervousness wasn’t as visible today, Jacobson saw, as they were constantly intent upon their surroundings: even the chain-smoking seemed less. “What about you? You happier with everything than you were?”

“I still don’t understand the delay,” protested the Russian. “Why can’t we go right now? Tomorrow? Why can’t we make it tomorrow?”

“Tell me about Andrei,” avoided Jacobson, taking the obvious opening.

“Why are you bringing him into the conversation?” The Russian frowned.

“How do you think he’ll react at suddenly learning what’s happening?”

“I want to talk to you about that: make sure there’s a proper, safe proposal.”

“That’s the sort of care I’m trying to convince you we’re taking.”

“Maybe I overreacted earlier.”

They were drifting away from what needed to be talked about, Jacobson recognized. “You didn’t tell me how you thought Andrei might react.”

“It’ll be all right, when he settles down. Understands.”

The Kremlin was disappearing as the boat took the first bend in the river and people began spreading themselves more evenly around the enclosed lounge, lessening their isolation. “It’s the very beginning, the moment it happens, that I want to discuss.”

“What’s the problem?” demanded Radtsic at once, stopping with an unlit cigarette suspended before him.

“We’re making plans to get Andrei out but we’ve discovered he’s in a relationship.”

“What are you talking about? What relationship?” The cigarette remained unlighted.

“A girl, a fellow student. French.”

Radtsic finally fired the cigarette, smiling slightly. “He’s a full-blooded Russian.”

“You knew then?”

“No. What’s there to know?”

“She doesn’t appear to be a casual girlfriend. They’re living together.”

“What!”

The Russian’s surprise was genuine, gauged Jacobson. “Everything’s got to be very quick, once the extraction starts: no unexpected complications. What’s most important is avoiding any interference from the French authorities.”

“I told you Andrei needed to be warned,” reminded Radtsic.

“How often are you in contact: exchange letters or talk on the phone?”

“I’m sure all my telephones are monitored: that my mail is being intercepted. I’ve told you that. I also told you Andrei wouldn’t accept messages through an intermediary.”

“I’ve brought a pocket tape recorder,” said Jacobson. “He knows your voice. Make a recording, telling him to trust the person who brings it to him: that he must do what that person tells him.”

Radtsic shook his head, his inhalations now coming with chain-smoking regularity. “You’re not listening to me! He’ll think it’s a trick. Or something made under duress.”

“How, then, Maxim?” asked Jacobson, desperately. “Tell me how!”

“Elana,” announced the Russian. “She’ll have to be got out first, ahead of me, through Paris. You’ll have to coordinate their extraction, together with mine here.”

“Will she be allowed to travel?”

“I have the authority to approve it.”

“You’ve told me you’re being watched: that your telephone’s tapped and your mail opened,” argued Jacobson. “Your approving Elana’s travel would trigger every alarm.”

“It’s me they’re monitoring, not Elana. There’d be a period, a few days, before the connection was made.”

Jacobson suspected that Radtsic was trying to force the pace and didn’t blame the man: it actually improved the Russian’s control of events, and if Elana was already out of the country it greatly reduced the chances of her suddenly changing her mind. Once in France, she’d be committed, with no way back. And so would Radtsic. “I’ll put it to London: see if they’ll accept it as an alternative to what they’re putting in place now.”

“I can put everything in motion within two days,” promised the Russian, eagerly.

“Don’t!” ordered Jacobson, just as urgently. “You’ve got to wait for London’s approval. Prepare whatever preliminaries are necessary. But don’t positively initiate anything, not until we meet again. And, Maxim…”

“What?”

“Not here. Never again here, at the terminal.”

“Where, instead?”

Insurance time, Jacobson thought at once. “You’ve got my private number. Call tomorrow, at noon, from a public phone. I’ll give you the location then.”

“Will you have spoken to London by noon tomorrow?”

“About a lot of things,” confirmed Jacobson.

Jane Ambersom was an intelligent woman who acknowledged her instinctive aggression to be a failing, just as she recognized its underlying psychological cause to be an ingrained resentment at her androgenic confusion. And she was further annoyed at her inability sufficiently to curb it. Her sexuality, in fact, was entirely and eagerly female, which added frustration to the resentment. She’d endured relationships at university that never went beyond a one-night stand and been hopeful of an affair when she’d first joined MI6, until, too demandingly again, she’d maneuvered her lover into a choice, which he’d made by returning to his wife. As she’d ascended the intelligence-service ladder and come under increased internal-security scrutiny, she’d subjugated sexuality for professional advancement, which she’d quite correctly doubted would have resulted from her submitting to Gerald Monsford’s clumsy, experimental pawing in his conveniently constructed bedroom suite adjoining his office.

Since her transfer to MI5 and her foreign-liaison appointment, she had become extremely hopeful of Barry Elliott, even seeing in her rarely allowed fantasies a somewhat strained parallel with Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova. So far their encounters, although social, had remained strictly although not quite formally professional. He’d volunteered that he was neither married nor in a relationship and twice instead of restaurant encounters had suggested art-gallery meetings-the National and Tate Modern-where she’d discovered he enjoyed the same artists. It was upon his recommendation that in less than two weeks and three novels she’d become a committed Elmore Leonard fan.

Lunch that day was at Joe Allen’s, which she’d initially feared she’d have to cancel because of Charlie Muffin’s disappearance, until the Director-General told her there was no practical reason to remain at Thames House.

Elliott, as usual, was considerately there ahead of her, and stood to help her into her chair, with her preferred Rioja already uncorked. He didn’t immediately embark upon a shared-interest discussion, which was something else that Jane preferred, but talked of a planned weekend Shakespeare festival in Stratford, having enjoyed his first visit to the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London. It wasn’t until they were well into their main course that Elliott came to the official reason for the encounter and afterward Jane was quite sure she’d not overreacted to his unexpected return to their earlier discussion.

“Those transcript excerpts of Irena Novikov’s debriefing have given us more problems than answers.”

“I don’t understand,” hedged Jane.

“There’s a lot of disparities between what she appears to have told you and what she’s telling us. We think she’s stalling. She’s appearing to cooperate, which is the deal for her remaining in our protection program, but Langley suspects she’s giving us the run-around. And there’s a lot of access pressure from the Russian embassy in Washington.”

“I’ve given you all I was allowed.”

“We want fuller versions, to check in more detail against what she told your guy, Charlie Muffin. He spent a lot of time with her in Moscow, didn’t he?”

“I don’t think it was a lot of time,” qualified Jane. “My understanding was that she persistently lied to him, trying to save the Russian operation, right up to the moment he caught her out.”

“There’s nothing of how he caught her out in what you’ve given me.”

“I’ll raise it,” promised Jane, an idea growing in her mind.

“We’d appreciate that. Maybe I could get an idea from Langley about what she’s telling them to offer in return.”

“I like Stratford,” risked Jane, in a complete change of direction. “Know it quite well.”

Elliott looked at her across the table, half smiling. “Why don’t you show me around there?”

“Why don’t I?” Jane smiled back.

“You won’t forget the comparison debriefings, will you?”

“Of course I won’t.”